


let's go dancing in the light

by goingmywaydoll



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Comfort, David-Centric, Ficlet, M/M, Wedding Fluff, and patrick makes it all better, david is an anxious lil bean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 20:03:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18373115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingmywaydoll/pseuds/goingmywaydoll
Summary: David, Patrick, and David's anxieties on their wedding day.





	let's go dancing in the light

**Author's Note:**

> i definitely wrote this too fast to be good at one am on a friday on my phone. my hand literally started cramping. 
> 
> the title comes from neil young's [harvest moon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPqv_N2mOGE) because obviously im using a song about marriage and it's been stuck in my head all week so now you have to live through it too!
> 
> edited to add: this is part one of the day of the wedding in this series.

If he was two years younger and lacking four gold rings on his left hand, David would call Stevie over and tell her to call an ambulance because surely the way his heart is beating is consistent with the symptoms of a pulmonary embolism and he does sort of feel like his arm is seizing up and isn’t that a symptom of a heart attack?

But he isn’t. He’s nearing on thirty-seven, wearing a tuxedo that’s slim in all the right places and has a flower tucked into the lapel and it doesn’t even make him feel claustrophobic when he looks at himself in the mirror before him and there’s no way that’s healthy or normal.

Stevie is sitting on the bed, tapping away at her phone absentmindedly. She looks nice, David thinks. Blue is a good color on her. He turns back to the mirror. His bow tie is off balance.

“If you touch that bow tie again I’ll strangle you with it.” 

Stevie doesn’t even look up from her phone. He spins around, trying to look like he wasn’t about to do just that. She sighs and throws her phone aside, getting off the bed to come to stand in front of him. “You look very handsome. Patrick is going to swoon when he sees you. Your mother will probably cry. You’re ready.”

“Am I?” he asks, quiet and ashamed. Something flickers across Stevie’s face and her phone buzzes on the bed behind her. She ignores it.

“Yes,” she says firmly, so full of certainty it takes David by surprise. “Plus, I don’t think I could be friends with you if you left Patrick at the altar.”

Unbidden, the image of Stevie with downturned eyes slowly walking up the aisle toward a confused Patrick appears in his mind. She’s telling him that David has run off and is very sorry. It makes his breakfast turn in his stomach.

“Unless that’s what you want?” Stevie sounds dubious but is clearly trying to play the role she thinks she should.

“Please,” David says, pulling a face.

“Good.” Her face relaxes and he tries not to be offended that she thought even for a moment he’d consider leaving Patrick.

“I want this,” he says suddenly, even if the sentiment is nothing new. He and Patrick have spent the last few months going over just how much David wants this and there was never any question of it in his mind. “I want to be married to him so badly.”

“So what is it?” asks Stevie, soft and patient.

“I feel?” he starts before shutting his mouth. He inhales through his nose before starting again. “I feel very calm. Or I did feel very calm. And now I’m not feeling calm. Because I felt so calm before. Because I shouldn’t be feeling this calm because this? It’s umm…big. Yeah, it’s really big and I don’t feel calm during big things and it’s unnerving. There has to be some reason I’m feeling so calm and I’m just being complacent, really, thinking all of this can just…happen. Things like this don’t just  _happen_.”

He’s wringing his hands now, stepping away from Stevie so he can pace around the room. The tie around his neck is getting increasingly tight but Stevie said he shouldn’t take it off and she’s right because any minute Alexis is going to come back to tell him it’s time and he can’t get married in an untied bow tie, never mind how his mother would react, he would look ridiculous and he wants to look perfect, he wants everything to be perfect for Patrick, who used to settle for everything but perfect and who deserves perfect but what if he can’t give him perfect?

He swears he’s breaking out in hives. Are hives a symptom of a heart attack? Maybe he ate something he shouldn’t have and he’s going into anaphylactic shock and his throat will close up and they won’t get to the hospital in time and Patrick won’t have to worry about being left behind at the altar because David will be dead.

Stevie is grabbing onto his shoulders, stopping him in his tracks. “I’m going to suggest something and you have to promise not to bite my head off.”

“That depends.” He feels better now that he’s stopped pacing, the pacing only built everything up in his head and made it worse. Stevie’s touch is grounding him and he slowly falls back to earth, feeling the ground beneath his feet again and air cycling through his lungs. His heart is still beating at an alarming rate and he’s still wondering if Ted would treat a heart attack but he’s breathing again and that’s good, even if it’s in short, puffy breaths.

“Do you want to talk to Patrick?” she asks and he deflates.

“No, we’re not supposed to,” he says, shaking his head.

“You’re going to see him in…” She glances at the clock before continuing, “literally ten minutes. I don’t think it’ll change anything. Do you want to see him? Because I sort of feel like there’s nothing I can say to talk you off this ledge and I’m not letting you go out there like this.”

David sucks his lips between his teeth, thinking hard. He nods once. Stevie gives him an encouraging smile and squeezes his arm. It’s all very sincere and caring and it would throw David off if he weren’t so distracted.

“I’ll be right back.”

And just like that David is left alone in the room, unsure of where to stand. He digs his fingers into his palms, wishing someone were here to ground him like Stevie did, and he wonders what Stevie is saying to Patrick, who might not even come. It’s not like Patrick is superstitious and the only reason they haven’t seen each other since last night is because of his mother’s very pointed insistence. He remembers her story of how Jen and Brad saw each other the morning of their wedding and look how that turned out.

Just as he’s convinced that he’s going to have to go out there on his own, someone knocks on the door, quiet and hesitant.

“Yes?” His voice cracks and he winces.

“It’s me.” Patrick’s voice is unmistakable. “Do you want to let me in? We can talk through the door if you want.”

“No, you can come in,” David says with little hesitation. He can already feel the itchy feeling under his skin fading.

The door opens, so slow David wants to wrench it open himself and then Patrick is standing in it, looking so gorgeous David’s heart crawls all the way up his throat and into Patrick’s hands.

His hair is longer than it is usually, something David has noticed in the past few weeks. But Alexis has styled it in a way that’s so effortlessly  _Patrick_  it makes him weak in the knees. He had seen Patrick’s tux weeks earlier when they had picked them up together but seeing him in it, with all the measurements perfectly tailored to his body, is a whole other story. David thinks his knees might buckle and he’s suddenly so grateful that the first time he’s seeing Patrick like this is in private and not in front of everybody, standing at the end of the aisle waiting for him.

“Hi.” Patrick’s voice is full of reverence as he closes the door behind him and walks over to David, slow and with purpose. He takes David’s hands in his. “You look amazing.”

David lets out a wet laugh and he realizes he’s crying. Patrick brings his hand to his face, running his thumb across David’s cheek to wipe a stray tear.

“So do you.” He wishes he could be more articulate.

“Are you okay? Because Stevie said you needed me and if this is too much, we don’t have to—“

But Patrick isn’t able to finish his sentence because David is cutting him off with a kiss, not caring that he’s fully crying now and pouring every ounce of certainty he feels into it. When he pulls away, Patrick’s eyes are shining.

“That’s not why I wanted to see you,” he says quickly, shaking his head.

Patrick lets out a breath, his arms coming to settle around David’s waist, loose and comfortable. “Okay, good, because I don’t think I could live through you leaving me at the altar.”

“Stevie said she wouldn’t be able to be friends with me if I did.”

“Oh, so that’s why we’re getting married then?” Patrick asks, eyes bright. He’s relaxed in David’s arms and David doesn’t want to ever leave this moment, looking at Patrick in his suit and waiting to start the rest of their life together. Somehow, in the minutes since Patrick has taken him into his arms, his heart rate has slowed and the heat in his cheeks has faded.

“Exactly,” says David. “I just don’t think I could disappoint her like that.”

“I wouldn’t want you to.” Patrick punctuates his sarcasm with a quick kiss before disentangling himself from David. “Why did you want to see me?”

David pauses, for a moment wondering how much he should tell Patrick. The answer is easy. They don’t keep much from each other. 

“I  _was_  panicking. But not because I’m afraid of marrying you. I’m so excited to marry you it scares me. It fills me with this bizarre sense of  _calm_  and I didn’t know what to do with it. I had expected nerves but I didn’t have any and then the fact that I didn’t have any  _gave_  me nerves and I think I needed to tell you, before I got out there, that…I’m so disgustingly in love with you and I want to be married to you a stupid amount and I can’t wait to see your grey hairs and wrinkles and the reading glasses you’ll eventually have to wear and call you my husband and argue about…401ks and—and you’re laughing at me.” His arms drop to their sides after waving around in the air. There’s a smile playing at Patrick’s lips and one hand comes up to cover his mouth.

“No,” Patrick says, clearly fighting the grin that’s threatening to overtake his face. “I’m not laughing.”

“It feels like you are,” David says but he feels like he’s floating on a cloud or has ascended into the sky or something because everything he said was so true and Patrick is looking at him like he wants all that too. Because he does.

“I just can’t believe I’m going to marry you in ten minutes.” The words send a thrill all the way down David’s spine. His skin is tingling again but not in the way it was before and he’s itching to take Patrick back into his arms and never let go. But they’re working on a schedule. He has to content himself with looping his arms around Patrick’s neck and hugging him tightly, Patrick burying his hand in the hair at the back of David’s neck and pressing a kiss to the space between his jaw and clavicle.

David thinks he must be glowing when he pulls away, Patrick’s hand trailing down his arm to take David’s hand in his.

“Ready?” Patrick asks and David nods, his chest feeling warm and full and sure.

There’s a knock at the door, sounding too urgent to be Stevie, and sure enough, it’s Alexis standing on the other side, having opened the door before they had a chance to respond.

“ _Patrick!_ ” Alexis whines and that was not what he expected. “I told you  _not_  to touch his hair!” Her heels clack across the floor as she crosses the room to fiddle with David’s hair. “I can’t believe you let him do that, David.”

He doesn’t say anything to that, just sending an exasperated look over Alexis’s shoulder to Patrick, who looks entirely too self-satisfied for his own good.

“I bet you two don’t even feel bad,” she mutters, brow knit as she tries to smooth down David’s hair. “I worked  _so_  hard on this.”

“Okay, except you didn’t,” David says, squinting at her. “I seem to remember doing my own hair then allowing you to fix the back at the very last second. You basically did nothing.”

“What _ever_ , David.” Alexis glances over her shoulder at Patrick. “I can’t believe you’re even here. You’re supposed to be like, at the  _altar_! You’re lucky Stevie let it slip that she let you come in here.”

Patrick has the decency to pretend to look admonished as Alexis waves a hand to shoo him. When he doesn’t move, instead shoving his hands in his pockets and watching amusedly as David tries to dodge Alexis’s hands, Alexis lets out a groan.

“Ugh, only you would make your fiancé late to your own wedding,” she says, narrowing her eyes at David, who glares right back. He tries not to look at Patrick, who is looking criminally smug and much too handsome. Alexis’s eyes widen like she’s realized something juicy. “If Patrick doesn’t go out there soon, Mom is going to come looking for him.”

“Yeah, okay, you have to go,” David says to Patrick, waving Alexis off and shooing her away. She looks affronted but he ignores it, favoring instead to lightly push Patrick from the room. The look on Alexis’s face is replaced with smug satisfaction. He hates that it worked.

“See you soon,” Patrick says over his shoulder and then Alexis is pushing him down the hallway roughly and he’s turned a corner and David is left with a dumbstruck grin on his face.

“So I guess you’re feeling better.” The sound of Stevie’s voice makes him jump. She’s leaning against the opposite wall, looking pleased with herself. He tries to pull a face but judging by her amused grin, he doesn’t manage it.

“I guess.” His shoulders jerk upwards messily and Stevie’s grin only grows.

“Come on,” she says, pushing herself off the wall and grabbing his arm. “You’re late.”

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr at [brewerspatrick](http://www.brewerspatrick.tumblr.com)


End file.
